Minds (social network)
Minds is an open-source and distributed social network. Users can earn cryptocurrency for using Minds, and tokens can be used to boost their posts or crowdfund other users.[2][3] Minds has been described as more privacy-focused than mainstream social media networks.[4][5]
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation).Type of business
- Bill Ottman, founder and CEO
- John Ottman, co-founder and chairman
- Mark Harding, co-founder and CTO
- Ian Crossland, co-founder
Required to post, follow, or be followed; anonymous registration allowed
June 2015
Writers in The New York Times, Engadget, and Vice have noted the volume of far-right users and content on the platform, following a trend across social media.[6][7][3] Minds describes itself as focused on free speech, and minimally moderates the content on its platform. Its founders have said that they do not remove extremist content from the site out of a desire to deradicalize those who post it through civil discourse.[3]
History[edit]
Minds was co-founded in 2011 by Bill Ottman and John Ottman as an alternative to social networks such as Facebook, which the founders believed abused their users via "spying, data mining, algorithm manipulation, and no revenue sharing".[8] Other cofounders were Mark Harding, Ian Crossland, and Jack Ottman. Minds launched to the public in June 2015.[9]
A Facebook page affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous encouraged its followers to support Minds in 2015, and called for developers to contribute to the service's open source codebase.[9][4][10]
In 2018, over 150,000 Vietnamese users joined Minds after fearing that Facebook would comply with a new law requiring them to remove political dissent and release user data to the Vietnamese government.[3][11][5] Beginning in May 2020, over 250,000 Thai users joined Minds after growing concerns about privacy on Twitter, which had been widely used for political activism.[5][12] This led Minds to add Thai language support to its mobile apps, and upgrade its servers to handle the influx of traffic.[12]
In October 2019, United States President Donald Trump invited Minds to a social media summit hosted at the White House.[13] In January 2021, after YouTube and Facebook removed tens of thousands of Trump supporters and alleged white supremacists from their platforms in the wake of the 2021 United States Capitol attack earlier that month, Minds was among the alternative apps those users adopted.[6]
In June 2020, Minds hosted "MINDS: Festival of Ideas" at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Appearances included Tulsi Gabbard, Daryl Davis, Tim Pool, and Cornel West.[14]
Users[edit]
Minds told Business Insider it had experienced 60 million visits in 2015.[4] In 2018, Wired said that Minds had 1 million users in total, 110,000 of whom were active in a given month.[2] In May 2020, Minds reported having more than 2.5 million registered users and 300,000 monthly active users.[12]
According to The Guardian, Minds is one of a group of alt-tech websites "whose light touch in content moderation is presented as a commitment to free speech", which has led conservatives to create accounts on the platform to use in the event of bans from more restrictive sites.[22] In January 2021, the New York Times reported that YouTube and Facebook removed tens of thousands of Trump supporters and white supremacists from their platforms, and that Minds was among the alternative apps those users adopted.[6]
Funding[edit]
Minds has been funded through venture capital and equity crowdfunding.[6] The company raised $350,000 in 2013. The service later raised $1 million via a Regulation CF equity crowdfunding campaign.[8] In October 2018, Minds raised $6 million in Series A funding from Medici Ventures, an Overstock.com subsidiary. Patrick M. Byrne, founder and CEO of Overstock.com, joined Minds' board of directors.[16] He was later succeeded by Stanton Huntington, General Counsel at Medici Ventures.[23]